HN user

johns

20,431 karma

Previously:

  Runscope (Co-founder, acquired 2017)
  Twilio (first Developer Evangelist)
  IFTTT
  Xamarin
twitter.com/johnsheehan

johnsheehan at gmail

Posts757
Comments1,337
View on HN
apps.apple.com 7mo ago

Show HN: A better macOS mailto: handler

johns
1pts0
retool.com 3y ago

Retool Mobile Private Beta

johns
5pts0
github.com 4y ago

twitter/the-algorithm

johns
374pts380
tailscale.com 6y ago

Two Internets, Both Flaky

johns
6pts2
swift.org 6y ago

Swift Crypto

johns
242pts79
blog.stevensanderson.com 6y ago

WebWindow, a cross-platform webview library for .NET Core

johns
235pts52
www.cnbc.com 6y ago

WeWork Pulls IPO Filing

johns
22pts2
github.blog 6y ago

Dependency graph support is now available for PHP repositories on GitHub

johns
3pts0
github.blog 6y ago

GitHub Is Now a CVE Numbering Authority

johns
7pts0
github.blog 6y ago

Welcoming Semmle to GitHub

johns
256pts104
github.blog 6y ago

Proxying Packages with GitHub Package Registry

johns
4pts0
github.blog 6y ago

GitHub Supports Web Authentication (WebAuthn) for Security Keys

johns
206pts65
www.forbes.com 7y ago

The DEA Demanded Passwords from LastPass

johns
54pts13
blog.jessfraz.com 7y ago

Defining a Distinguished Engineer

johns
292pts100
www.twilio.com 7y ago

Eliminating Robocalls

johns
280pts262
www.sec.gov 7y ago

PagerDuty S-1

johns
334pts187
opensource.dev 7y ago

Opensource.dev

johns
4pts0
stripe.com 7y ago

The Developer Coefficient: a $300B opportunity for businesses

johns
2pts1
www.cnbc.com 8y ago

Broadcom reaches deal to acquire CA Technologies for $18.9B in cash

johns
19pts3
www.troyhunt.com 8y ago

The 111M Record Pemiblanc Credential Stuffing List

johns
87pts71
news.ycombinator.com 8y ago

Ask HN: Anyone else seeing issues with EC2?

johns
1pts0
blog.runscope.com 8y ago

Capturing Webhooks with Google Sheets

johns
2pts0
blog.chain.com 8y ago

Introducing Sequence by Chain

johns
2pts0
blog.sentry.io 8y ago

We're Officially Clouding

johns
1pts0
brandur.org 8y ago

Transactionally Staged Job Drains in Postgres

johns
115pts31
blog.jetbrains.com 8y ago

JetBrains Rider .NET IDE Hits RTM

johns
4pts1
blog.nelhage.com 9y ago

Disable Transparent Hugepages

johns
6pts0
www.citusdata.com 9y ago

Efficient rollup tables with HyperLogLog in Postgres

johns
80pts5
stripe.com 9y ago

Stripe Sigma

johns
3pts0
blog.mashape.com 9y ago

The Mashape API Marketplace Joins RapidAPI

johns
3pts0

I had a base-hit acquisition and probably could have turned around and done another VC- or self-funded startup. The burnout was too much. After a hiatus I opened a bike shop this year. I can't imagine going back to writing software for money again (I still do it on the side).

Every bike industry vet I've talked to feels about bikes the way I feel about software. Broken industry, yada yada. Anything can wear you down.

I would recommend doing the opposite: interact more with the things you do like. “Like” generously, watch videos all the way through a few times, hit share, comment etc. I think those are the biggest signals that inform the algorithm.

I can give some context on that. Go back to 2011, visual HTTP clients weren't that popular. Postman, Insomnia, etc. weren't around yet. Working at Twilio, we regularly needed to show people how the API worked. Hurl.it was perfect for it. It was notoriously unreliable though so I pestered Chris Wanstrath and Leah Culver until they sold it to me for $1,000 (I expensed it, asked for forgiveness and jokingly call it Twilio's first acquisition). We kept it running for awhile. I left.

Then I started Runscope and we made a much better version of Hurl.it and RequestBin, but those two sites were by then linked in tons of API docs and we couldn't get those links switched to Runscope, so we acquired the links. Twilio was happy to get rid of it since they had actual infosec policies in place by that point and Hurl.it was regularly abused as an open proxy. Those two sites were the meat and bones of our marketing for most of pre-acquisition life of Runscope. We had direct links to Runscope for people who needed more features, and would tag visitors and retarget them later. Those audiences being shown an ad for a free, brilliantly-designed 'Everything is going to be 200 OK' t-shirt drove A LOT of sign ups[0].

Then we sold the company and I lost control of the domains to our acquirer.

Edit: Since Tod linked to hurlit.com instead of hurl.it, I assumed they had just cloned it but they also have the original domain hurl.it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVjhGa-wt9A

Losing faith in UX 5 years ago

This is configurable from the main app menu though. It’s nice not to lose all your tabs if you slip and hit Cmd-Q instead of Cmd-W